Step On A Crack

“When my posttraumatic stress disability claim was denied by the city for the third time, I decided, to hell with it, I’m done. I was going to pull off something large, or die trying. The St. Pat’s idea came to me when I moonlighted as security at the state funeral for the previous cardinal. I thought it was going to be so impenetrable, with the legendary Secret Service and all, but I found out what a joke it was. Like the rest of the security assholes, those guys were soft, all show.”

“What about the other jackers? Your coworkers?” I said. “How’d you convince them to go along?”

“Convince them?” Jack said. “I don’t know about you New York’s Finest, but being a guard chews you up. We’re inside the belly of the beast, too, and we didn’t do nothing to get there. Put shit pay on top of that, divorce and suicide rates in the stratosphere, and hassle from the bosses, you got a gourmet recipe for disaster. Ever get feces thrown in your face? Not good for a man’s general well-being.”

“Sounds heartbreaking,” I said. “But executing the First Lady, the mayor, a priest, and John Rooney because you were stressed out? That might be a hard sell to a judge.”

Jack didn’t seem to have heard me. He was staring off at the side of the road. The setting sun through the leafless trees made a bar code of shadow and light on the curving asphalt.

“We did it for each other,” he said quietly. “Go ahead and put us back in jail. Won’t matter. I’ve already been there for the last fifteen years. Guards do life just like prisoners, only we do it in eight-hour shifts.”

“If doing life is what you’re worried about, then I got good news,” I told the cop killer as I clicked off the tape recorder I had ru

“I’ll do everything in my power to see you get the death penalty, Jack.”

Chapter 114

IT WAS EIGHT O’CLOCK and dark when I pulled to the curb down the block from a small house on Delafield Avenue in the posh Riverdale section of the Bronx, just a few blocks from Manhattan College, where I’d learned to reason, analyze, and be a better person.

Five minutes before, we had finalized our plan at a rally point in the parking lot of a Food Emporium two blocks away. Steve Reno and his guys were already set up in the neighborhood. We had the house surrounded and wired for video and sound.

It was time to pick up the final and most putrid bag of garbage.

The inside man. The one Jack called “the Neat Man.”

According to one of our snipers perched on the backyard wall, our suspect was inside on the ground floor right now, finishing up di

“Car coming from the south,” I said into the radio as a blue Lincoln passed my position. I saw the airport taxi placard in its side window as it slowed before our target’s house.

“Looks like our boy’s ride is here,” I said. “Where is he now in the house?”

“Just went upstairs,” said the sniper.

“What’s he doing up there?” I said.

“Washing his hands,” the sniper said after a pause. “Okay. He’s finished. Coming downstairs.”

“Heads up, Steve,” I said into my Motorola. “On me. I’m going in.” I climbed out of my car. This was going to be good. I hoped.

“Get another fare,” I told the taxi hack with a flash of my badge as I stopped in front of the neat, narrow brick steps to the house. “His flight just got canceled.”

I rang the doorbell and crouched to the side behind a meticulously clipped hedge. There was a small glazed window beside the door, and down the hall I could see a woman and three kids cleaning up the dining room table with practiced efficiency.

I guess they hadn’t been invited to Costa Rica with dear old Dad.

A form passed the window and I drew my Glock. Then the front door opened slowly.

Struggling with a bulky carry-on and a black Tumi suitcase, Paul Martelli had a puzzled expression as he watched the airport limo pull away down the block without him. That’s when I stepped out from my spot beside the hedges.

“Paul, how are ya?” I said. “Fu

I watched a terrible flicker in the FBI negotiator’s eyes. A tremor seemed to suddenly affect his right hand holding the suitcase, the one nearest to a still-holstered nine millimeter.

I showed him the Glock I was already holding beside my leg-as three sniper laser dots suddenly danced on his chest like a squadron of angry red bees.

“That would be some very poor decision making there, Paul,” I told him, “going for that nine. But I’d like to see you try. Give it a shot, Neat Man.”

Chapter 115

“I WA-WA-WANT a lawyer,” Paul Martelli said when he was handcuffed to the leg of my squad room desk about half an hour later in Manhattan.

The cool, calm demeanor I remembered from outside St. Pat’s seemed to have taken a long bathroom break. The man’s hands were shaking, and circles of sweat had formed beneath the sleeves of his crisp blue dress shirt. There was an army of Feds out in the hall, waiting to get their crack at him, but not until I was done.

There was one thing I needed him to clear up for me.

Jack had already told me most of it. How he and Martelli had become fast friends after the Rikers Island hostage situation. How they found that they shared an undying contempt for the system; how they felt their pathetic pay was beneath them.

Martelli had been the inside man during the siege. He was the mastermind working behind the scenes, pushing our buttons. Literally having written the book on the subject, he knew what our reactions would be. Plus, he could influence what we did.

“I don’t have to explain to you how the game works, do I, Paul? Cooperation is the only thing that can save any of you losers,” I said. “Right now, the music’s still playing, but I’ll give you a little tip. The seats are almost full.”

Martelli sat there blinking and sweating. I could almost see the thoughts shifting through his head. His right knee began to jump suddenly.

“I’ll tell you whatever you need to know on one condition,” he said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“This place is filthy dirty,” the FBI agent said. “I need a moist towelette. I’m nervous, Mike.”

“How was the First Lady killed?” I said after I tossed him a lemon-scented one from under the take-out menus inside my desk drawer. Martelli didn’t speak again until he was finished meticulously scrubbing his face and hands. He seemed to have calmed down considerably, too.

“Alvarez did her,” he said.

“Jose Alvarez?” I said. “The hijacker who was killed at the dealership during the escape?”

“Actually, his cousin Julio,” said Martelli. “We had a pretty tall order,” he went on, staring at the back of my computer monitor. “In order to get a state funeral going, we needed to kill somebody high-profile and make it look like an accident. For months, I pored over potential targets. When I read about the First Lady’s allergy and her and the former president’s a

“So it was all over money?” I asked the FBI agent.

“We can’t all be Boy Scouts like you, Mr. Mom,” the negotiator said, looking me in the eyes for the first time. “Of course it was about money. Ring up those rich-and-famous assholes we kidnapped. They’ll tell you straight up. If they take your call, that is. Money’s what makes this dirty world go round, Mike.”